No matter how smart you are, if you don’t exchange values, you’ll starve to death. For one thing, being self-sufficient enables survival, but self-sufficiency is only possible if you have your own assets and can borrow from others. However, even with existing assets, one can only survive through minimal labor and effort, which means engaging in productive activities. Thus, having great intelligence and applying that intelligence to productive activities are two different things. Even if you aren’t brilliant, you can survive if you are productive. It’s essential to identify the productive activities in which I excel and those where I need improvement. If I understand that, I must act without looking back. - Joseph’s “just my thoughts”
If the price of bread is one dollar, it signifies that the bread has a monetary value of approximately one dollar. Conversely, this indicates that one dollar represents the intrinsic value of the goods associated with the bread. In other words, the values of money and bread (goods) are established through mutual comparison, which also implies that they do not exist independently in the world, as they are assigned absolute values from the moment of their existence. If only comparison can be made, value can be assessed regardless of whether the comparison is mandatory or voluntary, allowing the value to be expressed as a price, which is its monetary value. This suggests that there is no absolute value in the economy, only relative value , and that all values constructed through comparison are subject to fluctuations in price . Consequently, wealth involves the act of preserving or augmenting this relative value while continually exchanging for other goods as a legitimate act of trad...